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Recently, actor Tom Hanks was on a jury case and an attorney talked to him outside the courtroom to thank him for his service. That action caused him to be released after an allegation of misconduct was levied. The question is whether any other celebrities should be allowed to sit on a jury. I don’t think that they should.
Let’s face it: We love celebrity. There’s magazines, television shows, newspapers and websites (hi!) that all bow at the altar of celebrity. Anytime that there’s a trial, there’s also going to be a huge media circus, which is not good for those people involved in the trial.
Sure, the celebrity might want to show that he or she is just like all the rest of us, but let’s be real: They aren’t. They live in their own cocoon and living a life out of the public eye with something like this is hard. Like it or not, many of them have become detached from what ‘real life’ is like. On the other side of the coin, there’s always someone who would want to spread the news that Celebrity X is involved…as an ‘anonymous source”.
Celebrities on jury duty is nothing new though. New York has had tons of them over the years, with all the smiling photographs to prove it, but it might be time to let this practice end.
Some might say that it’s a good thing – maybe that celebrity could raise an issue about a certain aspect of the judicial system or shine a spotlight on something like domestic violence. “Hey! Hanks was on a domestic violence trial! Maybe we should look into it!” To me the negatives greatly outweigh the positives.
The law, with all its winding twists and turns, is hard enough to follow as it is… adding these people makes things even tougher. Let’s leave any stars to only be in jury duty on a movie or TV set.
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